AI2 CTO Ruben Ortega. Photo via LinkedIn. —The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence hired Ruben Ortega as chief technology officer for the two-year-old AI research foundation. Ortega, who previously served as CTO at Amazon’s A9 ad tech firm and ran Google’s offices in Seattle, will help Seattle-based AI2 take on some big new challenges.“I’ve known Ruben from his days as a graduate student in UW’s Computer Science department, and have long admired his trajectory at Amazon, A9, Google, and more,” AI2 CEO Oren Etzioni told GeekWire. “He brings deep expertise in search, exceptional engineering leadership, and a passion for high-impact projects. As CTO, he is poised to help scale AI2, and Semantic Scholar, to the next level in 2016 and beyond.” Before starting at AI2, Ortega served as the vice president of e-commerce technology for…